I used to find swimming a bore, but an arthritis diagnosis led me back to the pool – where I rediscovered a truly egalitatian, inclusive form of exercise
In my early 20s I didn't think much of swimming: it was boring, repetitive, slow. While it had been fun to mess about in a pool with friends as a teenager, for an adult who wanted a workout it held little appeal. Instead I ran. I ran for miles along the beach, cutting up to the cycle path when I met the rocks. I couldn't understand why everyone didn't do it. I had friends who swam, but I always felt that running was far superior.
I was wrong.
A year and a bit ago I was diagnosed with an autoimmune form of arthritis. A consultant told me to stop running, for a while at least. I ignored her, and one night in a fit of childishness threw on my running clothes and ran two miles to prove I could.
And I did it, I had defied her, but that night my knees seized up. They literally stopped being able to bend. I walked the two minutes to my surgery stooped over, sticking my legs straight out in front of me like a half-arsed goose-step imitation. I felt ridiculous, sheepish, culpable.
Running was out. Even turning a door handle was out: my wrists had frozen in sympathy with my knees. My body was on strike and I promised it never to be so stupid again, if it would only come back to me. I was filled with darkness, self-loathing and a horrible jealousy. I envied runners, I envied friends who could leap up stairs two at a time as if it were nothing, and I knew something had to change.
That change was swimming. My GP and consultant both recommended it, and a friend gently coaxed me with promises of beautiful Victorian baths with ceilings like the Musée d'Orsay until I gave in.
I was amazed. Swimming returned a freeness which I thought I had lost, and I discovered how wrong I had been about it for all those years. You can get a brilliant cardiovascular workout in a pool and I was quickly away, swimming lengths as freely as I had once run.
My joints improved outside the pool as well. I could feel my fitness returning and even my knees started giving me some slack.
Like many able-bodied people, exercising with disability was not something I had given much thought to before, but I started to wonder about the enabling powers of swimming, the way in which it is open to those who couldn't otherwise exercise. Suddenly swimming seemed to me wonderful, an egalitarian form of exercise, one that
does not exclude.
People with a variety of experiences have told me how exercise has helped them. Swimming was mentioned many times. Elizabeth, who has fibromyalgia, told me that being in warm water in a hydrotherapy pool is excellent, but there isn't one near where she lives, so instead she walks gently in the park.
Another friend, Catherine, who has ME, tells me she's always found swimming to be great exercise: "It's nice and gentle if you want it to be, but you can also go really fast. I always feel fresh and revitalised afterwards."
She cautions that exercise can be used as something to beat disabled people over the head with. "There is a huge misconception that disabled people and ill people are lazy or need a push," she says. "The number of times I get told my condition is due to lack of physical fitness or conditioning frustrates me."
Disabled people who wish to exercise still face obstacles and prejudice. One friend, Jessica, wrote to me that "disabled people are not able to benefit much from exercise as little provision [is] made to facilitate it".
I decided to find out what provisions were made for disabled people at Edinburgh Leisure. Heather Williams, disability sport coordinator for the company, tells me that all Edinburgh Leisure venues have hearing loops and pool hoists and that most have lift access. They also run quieter sessions with extra lifeguards for those with disabilities.
She talks about Jump In, a scheme giving eight weeks of free swimming lessons to young people with additional support needs. "It's had a really good impact," she tells me, adding that physiotherapists have commented on the difference the programme has made to patients. "It also increases feelings of independence and 86.4% of participants reported a rise in water confidence." She says about children with cerebral palsy: "They're quite restricted on a day-to-day basis but water gives them freedom."
Claire Craig runs Healthy Active Minds, an exercise referral programme funded by NHS Lothian that aims to improve the wellbeing of adults with mild to moderate mental-health problems. She talks enthusiastically about the programme and the ways in which it has helped people, sending me a report demonstrating that 99% of participants enjoyed taking part and 87% said that exercising had helped them increase their goals. Swimming is popular, as are gym sessions: "things they can do in their own time", says Claire. "I would love to see it develop – to look at enduring mental-health conditions and the people we're not able to support. I'd like to increase the capacity so we can include more people"
I hope they can as well. Exercise, while not a cure or a universal panacea, can help a great many people if appropriately facilitated. For me, swimming was healing mentally and physically. I still can't run properly without my knees punishing me, but maybe that will come back one day; for now, swimming has returned my ability to exercise and fulfilled the need to get my heart racing.
Swimming
Fitness
Swimming
Disability sport
Disability
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